"Advanced Micro Devices has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options, which could include a potential sale, as the chipmaker struggles to find a role in an industry increasingly focused on mobile and away from traditional PCs, according to three sources familiar with the situation." Woah. Bad news for competition in the x86 space.

As far as AMD goes, I still think their biggest mistake was not building their own chip sets. Most chip sets were full of bugs. I remember I bought one of the first thunderbird motherboards with a Via chip set. It had known (after several months) problems with geforce 2, sound blaster live, was unstable as hell.

As time went on, all of my AMD systems died at some point and I threw them away. I have only had 1 or 2 Intel systems ever actually die on me. Usually I get rid of them due to uselessness. None of this is recent, but consumers have a long memory. Now it basically comes down to Intel always having the top performing hardware.